Super Crate Box tells us the magic number is 600

Hats off to Vlambeer for making Super Crate Box. A great single screen platformer. Before it was nominated for a design award at the IGF it was nominated for love by the judge in my heart. And in my heart it took the grand prize.

I found Super Crate Box while we were in Honduras and when you’re at the end of an impassable dirt road with no TV and spotty Internet what you really need on your hard-drive is a good super-hard game with both running and gunning. I played the hell out of it and am proud to have 100% unlocked everything.

So why is it so fun? To answer that it would be helpful if you had at least a passing understanding of Super Crate Box (no I will not be acronyming that). There’s really no reason I should have to describe it to you. Just go play It. It’s free and more fun than reading.

During my Super Crate Box phase we made a trip to Pigeon Keys with our friends Julie and Ed who run Radical Adventures. It was an amazing trip! We’d done a lot of snorkeling before but the waters off Pigeon Keys were perfectly clear. So clear it was like there was no water at all and we were flying 10 meters over the ground in a giant beautiful Catamaran pointing out fish and rays like you might point out birds. Diving off the boat became like bungee jumping. This one novel twist on an experience we had had many times before made it go from fun to once-in-a-lifetime amazing. Our brain loves to be in a familiar situation with a twist because it loves to learn.

Video games are about learning and our brains do a lot of learning through pattern matching. When we have a decision to make we compare the situation to previous situations we’ve been in. If we can can find an identical one and we know how to solve it then we just do the same thing we did back then. If we can’t associate it with a previous situation at all we panic and do something random. But if it’s similar but slightly different to a previous situation, or better, is a combination of previous situations then we get creative. We try a combination of stuff that worked before. And this can be genius. This is an incredibly powerful tool evolutionarily so it makes sense that our brain likes to do it and it’s fun.

Super Crate Box is in the business of giving us these slightly-different problems to tackle. It has dedicated its life to this task and I applaud it for its selfless dedication to making me joyful. It manages this by taking a simple proven game (jumping around and shooting stuff) and combining it with a dizzying array of weapons, all of which are slightly different from each other. “But that’s hardly new, lots of games have a dizzying array of weapons” you say. Yes that is true, imaginary reader in my head, you are correct. But Super Crate Box knows you’re too shitty a game designer to use them properly.

Games are about learning and our brain really likes to learn. But it doesn’t like to learn just any old things. It likes to learn helpful useful things. It wants to learn how to win! Most games with a dizzying array of weapons let you chose which ones you want to play with. Super Crate box recognises this as a fault. The better you get with a weapon in Super Crate Box the less you play with it. The better you are with a weapon the more ruthlessly efficient you are at getting to the next crate and the next random weapon. In this way Super Crate Box refuses to let you specialise. It refuses to let you get good with one weapon and ignore all the others, which is how I (and I assume most people) play all those games with a dizzying array of weapons. We play games that way because our brain recognises that its often more efficient to get better with something we understand than to start over learning something we don’t. Unfortunately that’s less fun but our brain is a shitty game designer.

By forcing us into a situation we’ve already been in but with an unfamiliar weapon Super Crate Box gives us a problem we can tackle creatively. And when we succeed at one of these problems it feels great! In fact it’s probably possible to mathmatically determine the number of possible situations and therefore the number of situates which should be contained in the perfect game (assuming Super Crate Box is the perfect game). Say there are 15 weapons (amazingly I can’t find a list) and say there are 40 unique board states (I’m pretty much just making that up) that means there are 600 totaly states. So take a look at your favorite game or the game your making and count the states. 600 = IGF Design Nomination!

Anyway, once more doff your hat to Raimi Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman for being smarter than the human brain and giving us all something slightly different to play.

 

Also thanks that there is this

A Day In the Life of a Traveling Game Author

It occured to me that some people might be curious about what life as a traveling game author is like. I decided a good way to give you a look into our every-day life would be to write up a day-in-the-life. Here, presented for your edification, is yesterday:

I woke up at about 6:00 am. I don’t know what it is about the tropics but Sarah and I tend to get up with the sun. Our Internet is usually pretty good in the morning so I reached for the laptop and checked the emails and the facebooks. After tooling around online for an hour or so I got up and greeted the day.

As Sarah slept I wandered down to the beach. I couldn’t see another soul on the eight kilometer stretch of sand and as I walked I left the first footprints since last night’s high tide. It was before the heat of the day and I waded across a few low streams as I mulled over game design problems. I had done my first in-person playtest the previous day so I had a lot to think about. I like to walk and move around when I’m thinking and I like to be somewhere interesting when I think about game design. I’m not sure what role conscious thought plays in coming up with novel ideas and solutions but sitting on a log and watching hermit crabs scurry around seems to generate a close to optimal mindstate. As I was watching the hermit crabs I had a great idea. Actually it was a really old idea that had been rattling around in my head since I first started working on the game. Only now, four months later, was it apparent that this idea might be the puzzle-piece I needed to solve my problems. Play testing is a magical thing.

contemplationWell when you have a perfect puzzle piece in your head you can’t sit around watching hermit crabs. You have to go slot it into the puzzle! I wandered back over the streams and found Sarah awake and eating breakfast. We talked about some crazy bugs she’s trying to track down in her game Word Dog while I ate some (very unexotic) corn flakes. After I slotted the puzzle piece in I started playing with the new version of the game. It felt really good and I had Sarah give it a play to get a second opinion. It was working really well for her as well and I started to get excited as I imagined other people really liking it. This feeling is like mother’s milk to indie game devs. The thought of players feeling that same soaring joy that you feel playing your game is what keeps you going through the months of doubt and grunt work.

But you can’t do grunt work with an empty stomach and we were in serious need of supplies. We grabbed a backpack, locked up the house, and headed for the beach. We live in Pochote, a tiny fishing village. You can get fish here but not vegetables. To get groceries we have to walk down the eight kilometer beach to Tambor. It’s a long way back and forth in the Costa Rican heat but as far as grocery trips go an 8k walk down a sandy beach butressed by palm trees with scarlet macaws flying over your head isn’t too bad. On the way back we stopped for an hour of body surfing in the larger than average waves.

We go on a lot of walks no matter where we are in the world and the conversation is usually dominated by talk about games. I really like walking to think about game design. You’re seeing new and interesting things around you and this seems to fire off odd and productive thoughts. Where ideas come from is a grand mystery to me but filling your eyes with exotic sights and talking about what you’re thinking with another game author seems to bring them out of hiding.

When we get back I’m excited enough to grab the laptop and head next-door to do a little more in-person play testing. We live next to a bar and children’s music school run by a family of Canadian Costa-Ricans. That sounds like an odd mix and maybe a mix that you wouldn’t want to live next to without ear protection but that’s really not the case. Harmony Music School and Gabe’s Bar are as wonderfully as the family running them. They’ve made this tiny fishing village one of our favorite places in the world and they’re in competition with places like Tokyo and Istanbul and Edinburgh. The best part of travel is the people and the people here are great.

Gabe is about our age and is my local play-tester. If the game was in a more finished state I’d get everyone I could lay my hands on to play it but as it is Gabe’s English-speaking, game-literate, mind is a perfect and rare commodity. I trucked my laptop over to the bar and Gabe sat down to give the new version a play. His reaction was really gratifying. He lamented some of the quirks of the old system disappearing but was immediately sucked into the game more deeply than before. I find it easier to trust players behaviour rather than their words so when he ran out of levels and just started playing around randomly for fun I was a happy person.

By this point it was about three o’clock. I probably should have gotten back to the house and done some more work but instead I spent the next several hours playing pool. I have to admit, I don’t work super hard, but this day was pretty lazy even by my standards.

Sarah was beavering away on the deck when I dropped off my laptop and I could not entice her to abandon her work to skive off with me and play pool. Not until the impromptu pot-luck started up did she make it across the yard to Gabe’s. A couple of local musicians had decided to put on a little show last night so people started wandering over to Gabe’s at about 5:00. By happenstance a lot of them had food with them. We ate Jambalaya, fish caught out of the ocean an hour earlier, and, amazingly, freshly made Kimchee! Freshly made Korean Kimchee in Costa Rica! Thank you Kee Bum!

The concert was great and the evening was filled with the student musicians, local fishermen and guides, expats, and all the rest laughing drinking and eating.

That’s what being a traveling game author is like. It’s like being a regular game author but much much better.

Oysters & Puppies & Good times

Shakira & her pups
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

A couple days ago Colin and I went out with Don and his friend John on an oyster hunt. We crossed the estuary and walked over the rocks on the point to find a place we could enter the water without being chewed up by the waves. It was a low visibility day so we had to dive down to see the rocky floor and searched for crevices in the rocks where a little black slit of a mouth might be hiding. It took me nearly half an hour to finally bag my first one and I shot to the surface holding it high and singing the A-Team theme through my snorkel.

I found my second and third by turning over rocks, and in the process also uncovered eels, slugs, and a beautiful big cowrie whose shell was at first totally covered by its bumpy grey body. Then came the biggest, most tenacious oyster which all my tugging could not separate from the rock. The current was picking up as the tide came in, so every time I had to come up for breath I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find him again. My fingers got all cut up in the fierce battle, but after five tries I shot to the surface holding the oyster over my head in victory!

That night we had ‘pirates’ at the bar, which is an oyster with chili followed by a shot of rum. When I lifted my oyster to my lips (my tenacious opponent perhaps!) I saw a tiny pair of eyes looking back at me. The oyster had been home to a miniature transparent lobster, smaller than a thumbnail with perfect little lobster claws and wavy eye stalks. People eat these guys live as a delicacy that kind of tastes like sweet fish roe (Aaron ate one while he was here!) but I couldn’t do it. A friend took pity and brought it down to the ocean, where I doubt it will be able to find another oyster (I now know from experience, they’re hard to find!) but one can hope.

While the Mishkins were here we were all placing bets on when the local dog Shakira would give birth. Well, she looked ready to pop for the last two weeks I thought, but Ariel won the bet – she gave birth within 24 hours after they left. Gabe’s wife Natalia had to crawl down under the bar floor to retrieve the puppies. Four.. five… wait there’s two more.. eight.. oh there’s even more over here.. ten.. eleven! How Shakira, who was not a very big dog, fit eleven puppies in her I don’t know, but she is much happier now to have them on the outside (she could hardly walk before!).

The puppies still haven’t opened their eyes and only have two states: sleeping and hungry. For me they are right on the gross/cute line but quickly tipping over to cute. You can see what I mean in this short video I took of them piling on Shakira to feed.

Pochote to Montezuma in four hours

Rock shop beach
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Looks like I forgot to record our epic stroll to Montezuma, although you may have seen the pictures on Flickr. We’d previously made it as far as the lone “Jesus” tree with Don before the tide cut us off, but on our second attempt we had the timing perfect. We started out after a hearty breakfast of gallo pinto and egg, and made the first hour along our beach before the sun was too high and hot. In Tambor we tried to recruit some guys who’d been keen on the idea at Neisy’s birthday party the day before, but they were all talk so it was just me and Colin, Don, Riley’s girlfriend Pauline and her friend Tom.

From Tambor to the Jesus tree on the point is a nice shady stroll, then you head out over some rocks, then along a stunning white sand beach, then over some rocks and another beautiful empty beach. We were mostly following the old road, which used to be the only way to get from Tambor to Montezuma before they build the inland road. People still used it to get beach access for camping and picnics, although we met very few people on the trail. The sun rose and it got hot going over the rocky points and we were glad for the breeze and the cool shady bits.

Don was usually out front setting the pace. I hung back a bit and chatted with Pauline and Tom in French, which was refreshing after all the trouble I’ve been having with Spanish. It got me and Colin to thinking of where we might go next that we could practice French and live on the beach – well why not French Polynesia? They seem to have been hit hard by the recession so we found a great deal on the island of Moorea just off Tahiti. The next time we saw Tom, Colin noticed he was wearing a Moorea t-shirt, because it turns out he grew up there! Coincidence, or subliminal messaging?? Anyway he has given us all kinds of hints, contacts, and a map of his favorite spots.

About midway through our walk was a long stretch of black rock, and we were all getting pretty hot. Up ahead, we heard running water. It was the waterfall! We scrambled faster to get up to it, a perfect cascade of water coming over the cliffs that at high tide would plunge into the ocean. We sat under it for nearly ten minutes, cooling our faces under the torrent of clear cold water and filling up our bottles for the second half of the journey. Don carried no water; he just filled up like a camel before we left and he did so again here.

After that we walked along the most interesting beaches: two of them had drifts of perfectly smooth stones in candy-like colors of red, yellow, blue, green. Another had piles and piles of perfect shells, mostly olive snails which I guess the hermit crabs have trouble getting into. We started to meet other people on the trail as we neared Montezuma. Some sort of bicycling event rode past us, thirty or more of them looking hot and exhausted, accompanied by cameras and water trucks. The sun had passed overhead and we were starting to flag, hungry and hot and stiff. We stopped at one last deliciously cool swimming hole and I could feel the heat radiating off me as I lay facedown in the water for as long as I could hold my breath.

Just around the corner was our destination – Montezuma! We collapsed into chairs at a beachside sushi restaurant for the most delicious food I’d had in weeks (Colin reminds me that hunger is the best spice). Then we tottered around the little touristy beach town for a bit and caught the 2:something bus back to Pochote.

Quel journeé!

La visita de mi familia

Aunt Diane and the Falls
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Last week was our long-awaited visit from the Mishkins! Colin’s aunt Diane and our cousins Ariel and Aaron came all the way from Nanaimo, BC to hang out with us in beautiful Costa Rica. Colin flew up to San Jose to meet them and help with the process of getting a car and navigating the four hour drive over to the Nicoya Penninsula and our house in Pochote. They stopped at a zoo near Alajuela and saw all sorts of rare local animals from ocelots to alligators. First order on arrival was a walk on the beach (the first of many) followed by roast chicken at Gabe’s place (also the first of many).

For the last five weeks we’d been making do sans vehicle, bumming rides off our kind neighbors and walking to the Super Lapa Grocery at the other end of the bay. With the rental car we were eager to get out to see other towns and nearby reservas and refugios. We drove down to the cute surf town of Montezuma (which we’d previously seen at the end of our 4 hour beach hike) and checked out the waterfalls and Cabo Blanco reserve. Colin had a bit of a headache (understatement!) but he pulled through and we finally had our first encounter with the howler monkeys that we’d been hearing for the last 2 months. Sitting in trees, they look quite a lot like big black termite nests, but it’s easy to tell the difference once they start hooting. Later we walked up to a nice little swimming spot at the base of a waterfall. Colin and a local guide dove off high things together (the pool was small but 10m deep!), and I found a nice spot to sit right under the falls.

We continued our daily routine of walking down to the river to skim and swim, now with Aaron on the skim board and Ariel with me in the water. Even Diane tried bodysurfing! We took them over to the Playa de los Muertos one day to go snorkeling. Crossing the estuary was a challenge at high tide, but Ariel works as a lifeguard and was able to swim across with our food above her head, not getting it even a drop wet. On the way back we met a family of howler monkeys on the hill and stopped to watch them crossing in the trees above. It was an amazing experience seeing them right here in Pochote and knowing that these are probably the same monkeys we hear every morning.

On their last day we drove up to the Refugio Curu near Paquera. It’s a hotel as well as a wildlife park so I was prepared for tourists and plasticness, but there was none of that. We took the lovely low trail that goes from beach, through mangroves, across a rickety wooden suspension bridge, into the dry jungle for quite a ways, then through an overgrown mango plantation that has been left to the monkeys. We saw all sorts of wildlife: orange crabs licking their sand balls, lazy iguanas, skittish brown lizards with and without their tails, a huge inland hermit crab, a skunk, white-tailed deer (you’d think you were in Nanaimo!), snakes, “Jesus Christ – lizards!” (they run on water, and yes you have to pronounce it that way), howler monkeys, white faced capuchin monkeys, rehabilitating spider monkeys and a nasty goat that stunk of urine.

I should explain the last few. They had a rehabilitation pen where spider monkeys that had previously been pets and were being prepared for release into the wild. One of them ran right to us when we arrived and stuck his arm through the bars. I held his hand and he gazed at me as if to say “I can’t take it in here – call my lawyer, you have to get me out of here!”. Then this horrible reeking goat (the prison guard, I think) chased the monkey off to the other end of the pen. The other monkeys just looked on in silence, fearing solitary should they step out of line.

The best part though was the capuchin monkeys (as seen on Friends), which unfortunately only Colin and I got to see. A big family of 20 or so were hanging out in the mango trees chewing on fruit and bean pods and for some reason breaking off all the sticks (gardening?). There were little babies and bouncy teenagers and we abandoned the path to get as close as we could. Eventually one of the males got sick of our presence and went all monkey-aggro, baring his fangs at us with his butt all up in the air. I bravely snapped pictures until a second one picked up the stance then I booked it. Scary monkeys! Turns out they wanted us to back off so they could cross the road and head over to the other side of the river. One of them followed us and sat over our heads as guard, while the rest of them crossed through the trees with some amazing leaps (and some misses).

They headed off to check out an active volcano before flying back to BC. I can’t believe it was over so fast! I had such a great time with the three of them. Cooking and making smoothies, swimming and kayaking and hiking and walking on the beach. We were so happy to finally be able to share our little corner of paradise.